


Project Ahmdulain: Chapter 1

by SquatWizard



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood and Gore, Fantasy, Magic, Multiverse, Violence, Whimsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 10:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10989378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquatWizard/pseuds/SquatWizard
Summary: My first hand at something serious. An epic in the making, hopefully. Comments, suggestions, gripes, complaints, criticisms, etc. are all welcome.





	Project Ahmdulain: Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first hand at something serious. An epic in the making, hopefully. Comments, suggestions, gripes, complaints, criticisms, etc. are all welcome.

Chapter 1: Arrival  
Multiverse Sahl, Universe Unknown  
Unnamed Hub, Unknown City Aflame Outskirts  
Cycle:17B, 256M, 000K, 009 by Teythin Reckoning

 

In the midst of ruined columns etched with alien runes, in a small clearing suffocated with ash, the air quivered playfully. Indeed, all throughout the sprawling corpse of the once-mighty burg and the surrounding area the air swayed in such a way due to the gluttonous flames. But in this remote meadow the quivering was of a slightly different quality; the gentle undulations turned rapidly to violent waves, sloshing and melting. The normally placid sea of reality warped due to the passage of some barge, the rippling spread to the downed columns and their forms jerked as if startled.  
In the center of the clearing a glowing curve emerged shyly from the in between, like someone's peeking face. The curve, surely a part of some greater sphere, extended more mass into the wild churning and bulged disgustingly as if being pinched by some force. The quivering of the air reached a startling violence as more of the orb forced itself through, an animal trying to squeeze through a tiny pore. The sphere strained mightily and half of its bulk now existed within the city aflame, the morphed hemispheres resembling two cells going through the final stages of a cosmic mitosis. Then, all at once, the capsule rushed through as the rip regrew behind; it’s floating mass defying gravity, it’s gelatinous surface jiggling madly. Little particles of the same material trailed behind lazily. As it’s shakings calmed and the warping waves receded back into the in between, the opaqueness of the sphere became a wavy transparency.  
And lo, in the orange depths of the capsule there was swirling movement, trillions of tiny pieces moving wildly around! The glint of metal fragments there, the dull white of bone being sculpted here; and from the midst of the sphere accompanied by a rush of excited bubbles a nucleus began to grow. Blood red, a tri-lobed brain started to blossom, cells nearest it being sucked up and reassimilated. The central fissure formed and separated the two largest lobes, two other branches trailing down to form the smaller third as the crevices necessary of a brain began to bulge outward. It did bloom, and it resembled a macabre orchid as it did so, sanguine petals unfurled and an entire circulatory system formed in mere moments.  
Strong, graceful bones connected themselves at the behest of a mind as the delicate organs sprouted, growing like plump vegetables out of the ribcage. An intricate map of muscle weaved itself around a finished skeleton, golden networks of fibrous yarn packing on to each other. Leaf-green flesh began to knit itself across the the ivory plateau of the forehead, spreading rapidly to cover the patrician face and muscled neck, over the broad shoulders and stretching taut over the sinewy arms. Long, ebon hair shot out from the scalp and spread itself in a luxurious aura around a body undeniably feminine. Two things happened simultaneously as the green flesh closed over the tip of that last little toe:  
A heart thudded.  
An eye flicked open.  
Red. Even when viewed through the orange of the orb, that eye was the same startling red as the orchid. Propelled only by the hurricane of some volatile will, scraps of cloth and shards of cold armor dashed about the body in a psychic storm. The creature extended a hand, movement sluggish within the gel, and the cloth spiralled about to form a tight sleeve. The material dashed eagerly towards her form and covered skin as if ravenously hungry. Thin ohmstahl plate sprang forth from the orange depths and flowed over the cloth in dull purple rivulets, hardening into an articulate chitinous shell. The creature felt the small warm consciousness of her familiar begin to seep into the lithe body forming around her ankles. She watched with a motherly kind of pride as the creature put itself together as she had.  
As the bubble slowly descended to barely touch the ashen earth, the creature coiled up the alien's leg, slithering up her armored shins and crawling into the collar of her cuirass to wrap its tentacles about her body. Master and familiar, monster and monster, hovered there together newly born and fully formed in the city aflame; like blood-suckers trapped in amber.  
The entire spectacle unfolded in utter silence.  
At length, the master was the first to break that silence.  
“Hello, darling”, she purred into it’s mind. She sent it soft waves of pleasure along with faster ones that gushed excitement.  
“Hello, darling”, it copied it’s master exactly, but with that strange aftertaste of knowing it had been inputted from an alien mind. This reminded her just how annoying her familiar could be.  
“Ptol, I am not amused”, she shot at the little invertebrate as her grin soured a couple degrees, message attached to sharp waves which signalled a modicum of the master’s displeasure.  
“Forgiveness, Myrn”, Ptol responded with mock meekness.  
Myrn looked down into her collar and saw Ptol’s massive head dip down in acquiescence, it’s trio of milky eyes burning in the shadows beneath her breast. The gesture was oddly endearing.  
Hmm, it seems genuine enough, Myrn considered in a deeper layer of her conscious, so that Ptol may not hear her. Again she looked down at the shadowy figure of her familiar and at length resolved never to be angry with it. There would be no fun in it. She turned her attentions outwards toward the world at large.  
“So. How was it?”, Myrn squinted her eyes to try and pierce the orange veil, and could just make out the flickerings of massive bonfires consuming downed shapes.  
“The ride was rather...bumpy. Our native song is very faint, I can barely make it out”, Ptol projected cooly.  
“Ptol. Atmospheric and terrestrial composition.”, commanded the master. She felt a warm limb loosen its grasp around her waist and extend out from under her clavicle to worm its way deftly through the gel. It breached the surface of the capsule and was lost to her sight.  
A moment passed. “Atmospheric composition: 44.8 % oxygen, 30. 35% nitrogen, 12.2% carbon, 7.01% neon, 3.64% helium, 2% various others.”, Ptol rattled these off coldly.  
Myrn frowned internally, “Neon… Mm, going to need a helmet, but you should be fine, Ptol. You can breathe just about anything.”  
It’s head tilted to the side slightly, “Truly?”, it asked of her.  
“Oh, yes, you're also flame retardant.”, she giggled inwardly. Even mentally, it was a beautiful sound.  
Your laughter...melodious; like music...the familiar thought. The master intrigued the creature, to be sure.  
“Terrestrial composition: calcium phosphate, aluminum oxide, and calcium oxide. Beneath this, a cobbled street. We are sat on top of a pile of ash.”  
“Ash, huh?”, Myrn grinned darkly, this should get interesting fairly quickly.  
Ptol seemed to sense her murderous intent, “Your heart rate is elevating.”, the familiar observed, after withdrawing its limb back into the master’s collar.  
With slurping sounds the pod ripped itself asunder, wet chunks raining down all over the scene, juices soaking into the grey ash. Myrn stepped over the smoking husk, her first step on this new world was accompanied with the sound of ash crunching under her boot. She leaned to her left after a bout of retching, spitting a glob of orange phlegm onto the cinders. It sizzled slightly. If Ptol had eyelids they would have narrowed in suspicion.  
“This is a side of you I have yet to see. I had thought that I had observed something different lurking behind that amiable mask of yours.”  
“Oh, don’t be so serious, darling. You are very new; of course there are sides to me you have not yet seen.”, stated the sorcerer as she strode through the meadow of ash; a warm halo of azure sunlight made a sphere about her head and then faded. “Interesting style.”, she observed as she walked up to a column that had seen better days, “Very detailed.”, her gauntleted hand brushed against the dark carvings in bas relief. Several beings seemed to be bowed in prayer to something; was that a god, a moon, or an eye?  
“Ptol, save this image for me.”, she commanded. Before she had finished the familiar’s head had already stretched out from the dark confines of her breastplate and hovered before the column. The milky primary eye bulged out of it’s socket, becoming more conic as Ptol saved every minute detail of the etching; from the crack in the stone over the moon to the rags the pilgrim-beings wore on their backs.  
Myrn knelt down and brushed her hand across another ancient scene: the same types of worshippers as before, dressed not in rags but in stately ruffles and royal coats. They were all drinking from ornate chalices. Runes drawn onto the ground and walls around them.  
“A ritual.”, the familiar observed as it repeated the process from before.  
“Yes, and one of communion, it looks like.”, the master quipped cheerfully.  
But...communion with what?, they both wondered.  
She felt a tickle at the back of her skull, something watching her.  
Myrn stood up and raised her head to behold the sky, and what a sight it was to behold.  
“Whoa!”, she exclaimed loudly, startling Ptol, as she saw monstrous black clouds languishing across the heavens and in the center of it all a sickly eye looked balefully down at her. A gigantic moon, almost another planet, floated threateningly above this world.  
“So orange! Impressive moon!”, Myrn exclaimed.  
“It is intimidating.”, the familiar observed.  
“The waylines in this place beat like a heart, I can almost taste the energy”, Myrn thought as she picked her way through the burning rubble, “It feels as though this whole area is infected with a blight.” It was hot in the meadow of ash. A bead of sweat formed at her temple; as she stepped over the columns and the metal skeletons of buildings it sped down her cheek to rest on her chin. At least this gravity seems manageable.  
The gutted architecture formed a kind of semicircle around the pair, the duo had manifested right in the center of the burning formation. Myrn made her way to the other side and placed her hands gently over the stone of the remnants of a wall. It was hot to the touch. She looked up at the irregular edge. Mmm, too tall to leap over…  
She drew a mighty breath into her body, widening her stance, as she thrust her left arm into the raw stone. Silver energy spiralled up and down her forearm as her fist connected with a resounding crack; stone splintered as the wall exploded outwards and a cloud of ash rose up to obstruct her view of the outside world.  
She felt Ptol shake it’s head against her breast, “No finesse.”, it said critically.  
Her short laugh reverberated against the columns and through the flames, “Oh, Ptol, why skirt over, under, or around when you can go through?”  
“Why indeed.”, the invertebrate responded.  
With a scything wave of the hand she banished the cloud to reveal the world that she had came to see, and Myrn was not disappointed. Her red eyes beheld a world infected, a world that had been dragged kicking and screaming to the gates of a daemon realm. Twisted roots stretched themselves left and right across a landscape bloated with life as far as her keen senses could see. She was on a jutting spire of rock, probably some remote wayshrine or temple in the more peaceful age before the great change was wrought on this place. The terrible roots writhed ponderously across the earth, completely subjugating everything beneath their weight. Stone ruins vomited them out. Virulent geysers, fleshy growths on the backs of the roots, spewed a charnel smog into the air, they were doubtless the cause of the oily clouds in the sky. Everywhere in the tangled mass there seemed to be movement, everything was alive and agitated. Beyond this terrestrial horror was a vast, dark ocean. Her mind was quick to conjure up a vast orgy of monsters flowing against one another and eating each other in a stifling food chain. Perhaps most horrible of the sea was not what was beneath, but what was painted so perfectly upon its wavering surface. That flaming moon, it’s roundness and pocked surface was reflected back at her doubly; one orange face judging from above and the other beckoning from below. But neither this forest of dread nor this looking glass sea is what caught Myrn’s attention first, no, that honor belonged to the once-mighty metropolis that practically dominated the view.  
The cobbled path she stood upon led down the cliff, and meandered through the tangled roots to lead right up to a vast gate of dark grey and a massive wall that encircled the port city. It had to be 50 kilometers across at least. Ferocious statues lined the bulwark at irregular intervals; horned, winged things that clutched the ramparts with their talons. But, this wall was dwarfed by the towering steeples and the colossal castles that rose out of the soot and the flame. She could see how the city was sectioned off, the districts nearest the sea all seemed razed to the ground, with the ones in the center and facing the forest relatively unmolested. Microscopic orbs of red flickered along the dark streets. In the very center of the city, a tiny bulbous pupil in the midst of a massive eye, stood a domed building. It stood out because of its plainness. Tiered steeples and copper-burnished towers surrounded it, manses with bronze tiles on their heads reflected the orange witch-light of the moon. But this grey monolith stood undecorated.  
Myrn closed her mouth. She hadn’t realized she had left it agape at the sight that unfurled beneath her.  
“Ptol…”, she questioned.  
“Yes?”  
“How long have we been standing in this spot?”  
“We are approaching the five minute mark, Myrn.”, the familiar thought at her flatly. “We may be slightly out of our depth here.”  
Myrn fingered the hilt of the needle strapped to her waist, and wondered how soon she would get to use it. Not long, judging by their surroundings. She pointed her finger to the middle of the burg, towards the dome.  
“That looks like an observatory to me.”, she said calmly, reigning in her excitement by the scruff of it’s neck. “That’s where we’ll go.”, she said as she started down the path, the heat on the back of her neck retreated as she put distance between herself and the downed shrine.  
For a while there was nothing but the sound of her boots against the cobblestone. They had a long ways to go. At length the little creature asked something of her, it’s deep voice resonating in her mind after so much silence.  
“How often will we traverse the planes like this?”  
She smirked to herself, “Do you dislike it?”, she questioned as she stooped down.  
The question rolled around in Ptol’s head as it considered the matter.  
“I am not opposed to it.”, Ptol thought as the master took out a vial from a large pouch at her waist.  
“I’m glad then!”, she exclaimed. “We do not spend much time together at home; and I did mostly make you in order to go on adventures with me.”  
“Mostly?”, Ptol thought quizzically.  
Mryn tilted her head to the side as she studied the soil here. Deliberately, she put the vial between her teeth before pulling off her gauntlet and laying it on the road. The sorcerer pinched some of the soil between her thumb and forefinger, rubbing it closely before her eye until no more remained.  
“I was getting kind of lonely.”, she responded absentmindedly. “Why do you think I let a personality develop in you, my love? Most of us don’t do that.”, she thought softly, scooping a brown lump into the vial.  
After replacing the vial, Myrn stood up and looked again towards the moon. Her eyes narrowed at it, thin red slits.  
“My life practically revolves around these trips. The time spent in between them seems to consist solely of preparation for the next. Well, preparation and experimentation, of course.”, she thought suggestively.  
Ptol digested that for a long time, long enough for Myrn to get noticeably closer to the flesh-sea, most likely mulling down avenues of thought relating to the reason for the familiar’s own existence.  
Myrn smiled to herself and shook her head, “By the needle, my love, I made you an awfully quiet little bastard, didn’t I?”  
Ptol did not respond.  
“I am practically tearing myself apart for not giving you a mouth! Ohh, I should’ve given you one!”, the sorceress lamented as she walked.  
“This body has no need of a mouth, and I cannot imagine myself with such a crude orifice. Would you graft a pair of teythin legs onto a wherdtah? They would only get in the way.”  
Myrn chuckled darkly, “It wouldn't be the strangest thing I’ve grafted onto a wherdtah. One time I - ”  
“Mistress.”, Ptol warned.  
“Hm?”  
“Large organic approaching from below.”  
She snapped her head back earthward, hair and cloak whipping around her.  
Her needle leapt from it’s scabbard with a venomous hiss, her eyes clouded with dark mirth.  
An explosion of clod to her left made her turn, all she saw was a cloud of earth before she was barreled to the ground.  
Held inches from her face by a straining right arm, a glistening maw loomed large, pale appendages wriggling madly in between primary jaws. The tiny eyes glinted, and the jaws closed with a mighty slash, the displaced air buffering Myrn’s face. It didn’t quite have the reach to decapitate her.  
She met it’s dull gaze as it’s vile tar dribbled onto her cheek. Her weapon was pinned beneath it’s lengthy bulk; the thing’s face grew closer to her own as it’s armored neck creaked under the strain. It gurgled at her and she growled back at it, many legs stamped around her in frustration. Rage made her limbs strong.  
With a roar, she got her leg underneath her and heaved it off to her left. Myrn took several leaps backwards, silver light dancing about her ankles. The thing’s sides bristled at her; angry at her escape? The sorceress could get a good look at it now.  
It’s face (which she was already well acquainted with) was small and vicious-looking, knobby plating protecting it’s vulnerables. It’s many beady eyes flickered blackly at her as the little limbs jerked with madness. Heavy breaths expelled rank air out of a pair of gill-like organs on the sides of the neck. A hunched back that towered over the tiny face sprouted a few coarse hairs that swayed in a thin breeze. Mammalian, she noted.  
It stamped its several pairs of hooved feet against the earth intimidatingly.  
She sneered at it as it’s taut back legs bunched up, her eyes widened in surprise as it launched itself into the air many body lengths over her head. It arced down towards her out of the air, seeking to crush her under superior bulk. Myrn jumped backwards as it landed with surprising agility. She had expected a loud crash, but all she got were clacking hooves.  
A gap between plates looked like a fine place for her first thrust. The pale flesh was soft and smooth, the point of her needle disappeared deep into the beastly guts, fluids gushed onto the cobbles. Myrn grinned at the laboured sounds it made, at the fat bulk as it leapt away from her, pulling the needle out as it did so. Along with about a gallon of red ichor.  
The creature breathed heavily again, and lowered it’s armored head and charged her. Hooves gouging great furrows into the soft dirt. With a silver flash she leapt over it, hurtled a searing light at the head that turned back to look at her. She pounced on it and it was over as fast as it had started.  
Thin blood splattered her armor in places. “Ah...at least it did not touch the cloak.” Ptol was full of questions. She answered none of them. “Hey, Ptol, that edible?” She gestured at the still creature with her needle’s point. Hot blood seeped out of the beast's wounds.  
Ptol seemed to glower up at her. “No.”  
She frowned, “That’s unfortunate.”  
“Yes. Primarily, it has a protein-like compound I am not familiar with.” Myrn quipped up at that.  
“Tissue sample time!”, she grinned, producing a scalpel from somewhere. She put the square of flesh she cut out of it’s belly in a tube in her bottomless pouch.  
She sighed and began her trudging back towards The Forest of Flesh, getting to know Ptol all the way.  
…  
Multiverse Sahl, Universe Ptahp  
Hub Ahmdulain, The City Domnirie on Qwehym Ehpnain  
Myrn’s Tower  
Year: 17B, 256M, 000K, 009 by Teythin Reckoning

Leaving somewhere, somewhere weird. Weird, but pleasant. She said good-bye to the footman, it did not stop waving at her, not even when everything blurred grey. Not even as everything dimmed and turned black.  
Slowly her subconscious gave way to a precocious conscious. Warmly, everything settled back into her little body; almost as if it had never left in the first place. Her eye opened slightly, beholding a uniform coarse pale fuzz. Her senses returning; her cheek rested against comfortable padding, she wiggled her cold toes, felt her breast pushing up against her legs with each regular breath. Uncurling a slender arm, she reached toward the gleam of light seeping in through the twilight, the light that fell upon her face.  
Her hand pushed through and eclipsed the waning light, the air outside felt different somehow.  
A faint breeze tickled her fingertips and she smiled sleepily as she heard it. The ancient rustling of the plains.  
The sounds of the inowlken all brushing against one another with the wind, billions of wavy fingers whispering to her the secrets of the earth. A language so primal no words were needed. She had lived with those little voices forever.  
With the swipe of a green arm the fuzz was no longer all she could see. Golden eyes filled with the gentle light of wakefulness. The room was small, a stone square with a window hewn from the side. The earthy scent of the inowlken drifted on the winds, bringing the aroma so high, she could pick it up even from here.  
I wonder when I’ll get to see the footman again, she pondered dimly. It rarely shows itself to me. I think it might be shy.  
She got to her feet and stepped out onto cool stone. A small shiver danced up her back, and she giggled at it. A twinkling sound. She turned to stare out at the world. Her world. Her fair Ahmdulain, and she loved it dearly. The endless yellow sky, the fierce star smouldering high up. How bluely it burned. It was kind at heart, why else would it fill her limbs with it’s warmth?  
The girl jumped nimbly up, and sat on the sill. Little feet dangling thousands of body lengths above the plains. She could make out the dark dots of the teythinken on the broad wall below. Milling about their business, doing as they saw fit.  
Her eyes narrowed and she focused on a particularly interesting one. A teythin in an excellent hat. She tried to touch his mindspace and tell him so. But, too far away. Still just a lowly neophyte. The master could touch the minds of things in other universes, if she really went all out. Huge things.  
“I wonder why teythin build towers and walls and halls.” She wondered aloud, fingers tapping the windows hard edge. Just then her eyebrows perked up and her almond eyes widened.  
Myrn.  
The girl could not feel her master’s comforting soul, always filling up the place with power and surety. She slept well knowing that Myrn was there with her, some floors down. But her presence was vanished. Her light mood sank a little, she knew exactly what it meant.  
Her face grew worried. “She went plane hopping again. And she didn’t even tell me she was leaving this time.” She extended her will, sent probes throughout all the tower, looking for the dimmer echo of the new one. There was no sign of it either. She grew pouty, “Why does the invertebrate get to go but not me?”  
Suddenly, she turned around and leapt from the sill, and ran through the archway and down the spiralling stairs. She passed the library with its discs of ancient knowledge and histories inscribed by famous chroniclers of the past. She dashed through the compact laboratory with its multitudes of vials of every conceivable color and artifacts of unusual power. She wanted to be in Myrn’s place, and only in Myrn’s place.  
A fixed ball of azure cast her shadow into the room whose archway she stood shyly in.  
Myrn did not have anything useful on the floor or walls, just old looking sets of armor and dusty needles. These injured pieces were a physical manifestation of Myrn’s journeys throughout the Multiverse; a charred breastplate, a purple needle splintered in two, a dull green set marred head to toe. Myrn had told the stories of each to her little apprentice in this very room, speaking of the weaponry and armor like long dead friends. It was very un-teythin-like to keep corporeal souvenirs of the past. Her scent lingered heavily here and ghosts of her aura still remained, even though she, for the time being, ceased to exist on Ahmdulain.  
The girl walked along the perimeter of the room, reminiscing on the metal corpses as if she were Myrn herself. She might as well have been, her mistress had shared all those memories with her, both psychically and verbally. The apprentice felt every metallic dent and scratch on her own body as her hand hovered over them.  
A very large chair dominated the center of the back wall. Almost a throne, reminding her of Domnirie’s past when powerful teythin used to sit in them. An old helmet rested at the foot, a needle-in-progress leaned gently against the arm. She peered into the battered old thing’s eyes. Myrn had told her apprentice that it was from her first plane hopping, almost thirty years prior. The girl stood up and beheld the fiery weapon. It radiated a faint glow like something from epic. Something like this, here, in a dim old room? She ran her finger along the white scale of the needle’s length, eldritch power making her hair stand on end. And it isn’t even complete… she breathed mentally. She could not wait to experience the battles Myrn would rush into with this one. The souls the green needle has taken, even the one’s the purple needle has taken, they would seem paltry in comparison to the number this one would claim. If she was lucky, then perhaps she could travel with Myrn herself for those memories.  
She felt lonely, curling up in her master’s favorite spot with the nameless weapon. “Come back safe, Myrn.”, she pleaded, cuddling the needle in a tight embrace and reliving memories not entirely her own.  
…  
Myrn trudged along, red eyes wide and sightless, glowing like lamps on this dim world. Her attentions were focused beneath the soles of her boots; very wary of vibrations. She had encountered a couple more of the odd creatures along the way. She dubbed them mentally as etluomnegth, “gibbering jumper” in the naming language. She could not wait to do some tests on the samples she had collected.  
A sour crag-wind battered her cloak and dragged her from her thoughts. The roots towered over her now, the lonely cobbles ran unerringly into their midst as they grew around and over it.  
She, a moth with a purple shell, fluttered before the yawning abyss the trail created through the flesh. Myrn gazed down and studied the path hard. She noted a few things.  
“It appears we were on a charmed road the entire time, love.”  
“I could have told you that.” Ptol responded flatly.  
“Good thing I made you more perceptive than myself!”, she jested.  
“Will we enter?”, the familiar asked after a moment.  
“Oh, yeah. We have to in order to get to that city. I wonder what it will be like on the other side of those walls? It did not look like any city I have ever seen; on any planet.” “Ptol?”  
“Myrn.”  
“Any sort of blood bags near?”  
“You will get your fix very soon.”  
Her eyes glinted a little at that, it would appear Ptol had discovered her passion. She was glad that her familiar was not very judgmental. Her hand crept upward to rest on her needle’s pommel, a ball of solid limstahl. It had done that probably a hundred times since she got here. Without any further delay Myrn stepped into the Forest of Flesh, crossing an invisible line between the rolling ashlands and the official domain of the Moon’s servants.  
The atmosphere was immediately different. Heavier. Hot. Scalding, even. She lept out and into the ashlands no more than a split second after her nose crossed the barrier. Her mind sent an accusing barrage at Ptol, littered with some of her most inventive curses.  
“I could detect nothing of the change in temperature. No heat emanates from that flesh.”, the familiar maintained.  
“I felt nothing, either, obviously. Now that just messes with my head.” With a thought a glow sped over every square inch of her skin, and then faded. Ptol squirmed some inside her cuirass.  
“Sorry, love. I’ll warn you next time.”  
She could taste the volatility in the air as it filtered through the charm she blessed her skin with, waylines crissed and crossed all around her, threading immaterially through the thick diameters of flesh. Flesh. Flesh. I have been calling it flesh since I saw it on the hillock, but… she removed her gauntlet and ran her fingers along the wall of twisted limbs to her right. Definitely alive… she could feel materials being moved around inside. One of Ptol’s limbs trailed along behind her hand as she walked.  
“Silicon-based. Quite dissimilar to most things on Ahmdulain.”  
“Silicon?”, Myrn questioned. That can’t be right. A particularly stunted tuber caught her attention. The scalpel came out in one deft move as she bent down to inspect it. The roots wore a flesh coat, but there was no muscle behind it. They were crystalline in nature; the coat seemed to have no other purpose than to disguise that fact. Spooky. She jabbed her scalpel into it a couple times just to piss it off and resumed walking.  
“So the grubs and the roots are not related then.”, she mulled it over as she explored.  
“They seemed like herd creatures. The reason for the grub’s tiny numbers must be the roots themselves. They are like a parasite in a body, diverting the nutrients of the host to feed its exponential growth; terraforming the hub as it does so.”  
Myrn playfully punched a thick coil to her left with a gauntleted fist, “And so we trek through the bowels of a giant tumor!”, she howled to the canopy above, like the street performers in Domnirie who improvised epics off the tops of their heads.  
Suddenly, they came across a widening in the path marked by a tall street lamp along the shoulder of the cobbles. The dull light it casted threw a blue shade on the flesh wall beside, and beyond the widening yawned a draft of hot air, like the night time breathings of a gigantic beast out of the old tales. Slowly, the sorceress crept up and laid a hand along the wall to steady herself. It was gloomy here, even for teythin eyes, she realized as she slipped her head into sudden darkness. The canopy above had been growing more and more dense as the two travelled further in, and now only slivers of the moon’s light made it through the arms to rest sharply along the path.  
“Altering vision.”, she told her familiar, and then steadied herself before opening her eyes. New colors assailed her mind, the world flared bright again. Her boot caught a root stretched over the path and she stumbled slightly.  
Ptol tightened some of the limbs around her waist comfortingly. A wordless question slipped from it to her.  
She grinned and stepped forward, the canopy above all but impenetrable.  
They came across a corpse a ways after the lamp. A bizarre looking thing. Many legged, each ending in a dextrous looking hand. Eight fingered, with far more joints than teythin had in their digits. She cocked her head to the side. It was curled ventral side down, the dark flesh on it’s back that the coarse shroud did not cover looked shriveled. A faint perfume wafted up from the corpse, like slightly spoiled fruit. No natural armor visible on dorsal side. Capable of creating clothing, no surprise there, after noting the hands. Is this one’s people responsible for the building of the city? She hooked a hand under it and turned it bodily over, flesh flaking off at places. It had a large head, it’s brain size to body weight ratio was likely larger than that of the teythinken, with several undoubtedly sensitive eye stalks growing out elegantly. She pried open a small curved and conic structure she assumed must be the mouth. Stone-like material...no teeth.  
What Myrn was most interested in was not the creature itself, but what it had growing out of it. Pearlescent, spore-like growths. Clearly composed of a lattice structure. Undoubtedly the cause of death. “Ptol?”  
“Silicon-based. Parasitic.”  
She reached into her collar and nudged it, “Glad I brought you along.”  
“It brings me little pleasure in knowing that.” Her chuckle seemed to sour the little familiar’s mood even further.  
Myrn looted the corpse quickly and moved on, she could study the artifacts when they returned to Ahmdulain.  
Ptol noted, with it’s milky primary eye peeking out, just how efficiently she scooped all of the creature’s belongings into her pack.  
Continuing down what seemed a giant esophagus to Myrn, the two were surprised at how much space they were getting, the walls and ceiling gradually shying away from them until dropping off completely at a point. The hollow they stood at the entrance to was utterly massive; Myrn could only just make out the dark ceiling leagues above, even with her new sight.  
“Ah, daemon shit.”, she cursed. “Ptol, I think we’re underground.”, she whispered.  
“How did you not notice a degree of decline on the path? You’re the one with legs.”  
She shoved a gauntlet over her mouth to stifle laughter, “I am unsure, my sense of space has felt off since we got here.”  
Myrn spied a ramshackle village, practically aglow with all of the warm bodies shuffling around in it. They let off a strange aura, but that never stopped her before. Just shy of licking her lips, she strode eagerly towards it, completely ignoring Ptol’s level-headed calls for caution. Over and past a slight hill in the path and she was laying into their lumbering forms with her needle. They were covered in the growths, some of the more infested actually having giant dim crystals sprouting from their backs, hunching them over. They were slow prey, dragging their many limbs ungainly over the cobbles, having trouble lifting their massive heads off the ground.  
The limstahl punctured the heads with an almost sickening ease, ichor flooded the road as they threw themselves mindlessly against her armoured bulk, the tallest of them reaching only up to her chest. Her ward that protected her flesh from the heat denied her the single greatest pleasure of the slaughter: feeling the hot blood against her skin.  
Her eyes began to cloud over just as the last fell, spindly neck crushed. The cloud receded from the the corners of Myrn’s vision, presumably retreating back into her mindspace. At least, that’s where she thought it went.  
She found herself standing in a town square of sorts, after leaping over their sad excuse for a wall, and was surrounded by piles of the pitiful things. Their thin blood splashed underfoot. She was panting, but more from excitement than from exertion; her madness cooling as quickly as it warmed up.  
“There are codexes about this from the past. Ancient accounts of barbaric teythin who fight with mad abandon. The chronicler called it bloodlust.”, Ptol observed.  
She grinned her wolf grin at him, “Astute as always.”, she mocked.  
“Is it similar to sexual gratification?” It seems the familiar was still curious.  
Alright, I’ll humor you. “It’s very similar, the only real difference being the location.”  
“Location?”  
“Yes. Instead of in between my legs the feeling emanates from in between the eyes. What you just witnessed there? That was barely foreplay!”, she joked.  
“You are a frightening woman, mistress.”  
“You get formal with me when you are concerned.”  
“Yes.”, came the response. “An idiosyncrasy of mine, I suppose.”  
A couple more splashing blue strides through the gore and they were before the only stone structure in town. A pair of large ornate doors dominated the view, fashioned from a strange, cold grey-silver, an unmistakable moon emblazoned on them. Doors. A peculiar invention. There are no doors in Domnirie. Why seek to separate what is whole? She could barely fathom it. Even opening them gave her an odd feeling, pushing them gently inward so they no longer blocked her path. The sorcerer left them open behind her.  
“This would be a good spot to lay low in for a while.”, she thought as she strode into the center of a kind of lobby, rife with odd statues. She was surprised to find it coated in a form of dust. Stone pilgrims clustered around the bases of support columns, frozen in poses of silent agony. Their many limbs arching, bodies crawling over one another seemingly to get to touch the runed columns. The pillars very closely resembled those she found in the wrecked temple they had arrived in the midst of. They were the strangest objects of worship Myrn had ever seen. Usually it was something smaller and more symbolic, not a recreation of an actual scene.  
“What do you say, Ptol? Clear house and rest up here?”, she asked.  
“Yes.”, came the reply.  
“Alright, I think I’ll let you do that, then.”, she said aloud as the pack fell from her shoulders with a heavy thud. “Before you do that; though, would you remove these straps for me?”  
She had given Ptol a lithe and fluid pale body. Boneless. With liquid grace it climbed up to coil gently around the sorcerer’s neck and undid the fastenings at the pauldrons.  
“Thank you, darling.”, she rewarded it with an affectionate nudge.  
Myrn practically tumbled onto the ground. Now that her breastplate was off she felt heavier and lighter at the same time. With Ptol in her lap, she put her cheek up against the cool stone of the column. It is cooler here… With the same kind of charge the road had on it. I can probably remove the flesh charm, but not the helmet.  
Her eyelids drooped after she did this, dimming the light her eyes produced significantly.  
She thought she felt the familiar slither off of her legs, her eyes shut with a seemingly titanic thud. This is quite the homely little nook… for being nestled betwixt the petrified bodies of little pained teythinken, that is...Her mind slipped quickly into the realm of dreams…  
It had to have been but a moment before her soul crawled back up the pit into wakefulness. She lunged forward bolt upright, and only the temple’s silent walls and tall columns greeted her feeling of wariness. A black heaviness lingered in the air, pushing down on her body. There was something comforting and familiar about the dark. She sent probes into the dusty stone around her, and caught Ptol scurrying on it’s way back from the attics of the top floor seemingly uninjured. The faint presences she had sensed after striding in were extinguished and there was nothing larger than a hand within a 2 kilometer radius; she was sure there was no danger of something slitting her throat in her sleep. Still, she sat up against the column and waited for Ptol to deliver its assessment to her.  
The little thing returned after a few moments crawled by. Myrn saw the white form slither out of the gloom to stop just before her outstretched legs, head bobbing up and down almost imperceptibly. She could see a distorted reflection of herself in it’s gigantic primary eye.  
“Hello.”, came the tired welcome.  
“Greetings.” It seems expectant. She blinked once, very slowly.  
“Status report.”, she thought at it as she reached into her pack for some rations.  
“Nine entities, seemingly juveniles of the species encountered earlier. All infected with the growths.”  
Myrn nodded as she spooned some bright jelly out of a container. “Did they give you any trouble?”  
“None, they seemed grossly obese, and could not move.”  
She held some jelly out towards her feet, “You want some?”  
“I ate one of the infants.”  
She snorted. “Well, I hope it was worth the risk of infection. How did it taste?”  
Ptol shook his bulbous head just like a teythin would have. “Risk of infection was zero percent.” The familiar paused. “Oily.”  
“Ugh, gross!”, Myrn’s alien laughter echoed down corridors that had never heard the sound before.  
“So, you find any interesting loot?”, she thought conspiratorially.  
“Tomes. There is a slight charge on them, but nothing terribly groundbreaking seemed to lie within.”  
Myrn gazed at her servant cooly for a moment, then shrugged. “That might change once we reach the city; but, for now, I will trust your judgement.”  
Ptol bobbed at her.  
She smiled, “You look ridiculous when you do that.”  
“I believe that would be your fault.”, it retorted.  
“Here.”, she said warmly, and patted an armored thigh.  
The invertebrate slinked over and curled itself stiffly round her legs, it’s head in her lap, and they rested there like that for what seemed to Myrn hours on an Ahmdulainian timescale. After their respite, the two hopped from village to village within the massive dome, Myrn slaughtering the inhabitants of all of them; though no burg within the Forest of Flesh seemed to be as large as that first one.  
She had rehearsed this particular raid many times by this point, and their proximity to the far wall of the dome suggested that this was the last time Myrn would have to do so. Her steady stride began to pick up speed as she neared the earthen fortifications of the last town. Boots came down faster and faster, smacking the grey cobbles until she was at a quiet sprint. Lungs silently producing powerful breath after powerful breath as her long limbs covered the terrain with preternatural ease. The only sound to announce her arrival to the village was a gentle clinking of ohmstahl plates rubbing against one another.  
With a flick of her heels she scaled the wall as that mad grin split a narrow ravine across her features, she could already feel the clouds coming out. Clouds that on this world rained thin blue blood.  
She landed heavily and with a sizeable thud, the listless bodies around her suddenly bristled with agitation as all sight stalks in the vicinity turned to regard her. Some larger ones charged at her on three grossly thickened arms, the luminescent infection hunching them over; but most scurried at her how the race naturally moved. Fast and low to the ground, utilizing all limbs.  
Hmm, they definitely aren’t reanimated corpses, she considered as a dull blue fash announced her needles arrival, no, definitely not. She was starting to grow bored of what was essentially the same fight playing out over and over again. Probably why I am still level-headed, she concluded.  
A large one launched itself at her, and she side-stepped, impaling it from the side. The needle ripped free in a cloud of gore before the corpse even landed. Then came the swarm, two score thin dark shapes. The needle became less a solid object and more a dark flash of off light as it plunged through head after head.  
A tripedal one crashed through the wall of dwelling a story above, clacking its mouth parts violently at her as it tumbled bodily through the air like an unsightly comet. She stomped the ground, thousands of the tiny silver mites spiralling around her leg. A spike of hardened earth ripped up from the ground and speared the glowing thing through, leaving it writhing in mid-air. Her trademark force magic, with a little geomancy mixed in for kicks.  
The energy produced had scattered or killed most of the remaining creatures, but one particularly cunning one leapt on her back from behind. Another saw its chance as well, dashing forward quickly to capitalize on her distraction. She felt Ptol rocket out of her collar as she snatched the one off of her back in a move almost too fast to follow, snapping the neck and tossing it away. It landed against the wall of a dwelling and tumbled limply to the ground.  
Myrn turned just in time to see her familiar force the mouthparts open on the other one with it’s limbs, and rush down the gullet. Her eyes widened in surprise as Ptol’s head disappeared down the creature’s throat, then all of its tentacles, and then the entire body. The thing convulsed horribly, clawing at it’s beak with half of it’s arms and clutching it’s body all around with the remaining half. The spark all living things had melted out of the host’s frame, though the parasite on it had yet to die. The corpse seemingly gave birth to Ptol out of a rectum somewhere, the pale thing’s master watched in morbid fascination as her creation slid out, covered in blood and filth.  
Ptol slithered up her outstretched arm, but stayed curled onto the outside of the armor. It was an unspoken that it was not to go inside covered in alien shit. “Thank you for the save.”, she said softly, noting the smell.  
"The most it could have done to you would be a gouged eye."  
"True. But magic does not make a missing eye any less painful."  
"Turn it off then. Most in your line of work do."  
Her eyes sparkled in the dim, "I like to keep it on."  
She exited that last town under the dome and entered a wide passage that rose up at an incline barely perceptible. Myrn signed in relief. Slaughtering weaklings was getting repetitive. With a smile she began her slow ascent to the surface.  
"That was your first opponent slain in battle back there." It was not a question, but it had the ring of one.  
"And a very interesting method of execution I might add."  
"This shell you put my soul in makes killing things from the outside problematic."  
"It took me cycles to make that body for you! I collected the absolute best materials I could with my limited resources," the master defended herself.  
"Ptol's giant orb focused upward on her face, "How did you procure a soul? I have these faint stirrings inside, I was much lighter. Orbiting... around and around... around."  
She friend smugness. "Only the best can manage it. It's a lot like hunting for prolm: you find a body of water, you toss in a lure, and then you wait!"  
"Your vague analogy is unsatisfactory," it thought at her.  
She laughed aloud, "Oh, how I love teasing you, Ptol! If you want to know so badly, then why don't you do some experiments of your own when we return home?"  
"I intend to," came the steely reply. It thought some. What would a body of water be to a soul? And a prolm lure for souls?  
She could sense her servant's mind mulling over what she had said. Her smile blossomed internally, you'll figure it out eventually.  
Myrn took in a heavy breath. The tunnel should lead upwards towards the surface and to the gates of the wrecked metropolis. She walked, and walked, and walked. Just as the roots had thickened on the way in, now they were thinning out. The pair encountered a second lamp right as the moonlight revealed itself once more. This one had gone dim. It did not cast the comforting blue light it's sibling had, but instead lay twisted across the path. It's burnished metal form resembled a mangled body. Stepping over it have Myrn a constricted feeling in her chest. Almost as if the roots had found their way inside, and were squeezing the easygoing out of her. The moment the lamp was behind her she could feel the moon's malevolent presence upon her neck once more. Myth could feel it up there in the sky. Looking. The feeling recedded as soon as it appeared, but did leave her entirely.  
"Mistress.", Ptol's thought finally made it's way to her. The servants eye floated in front of her face, and she realized she had halted midstride.  
She shook her head. "Fine. It's fine." Myrn could feel an awareness settling on her, stronger than when they had arrived. Of course it was, she was deeper into enemy territory now. The thought of this analytic gaze sent a spark through her veins. The sorcerer wanted to flee, but she also wanted to delve forwards as deeply as possible.  
She muttered softly to Ptol, "This is what walking is all about, my love." She groaned. "The apprehension eats at me." The familiar grew very quiet. Thinking, probably. It was pressed close against her body, but their lines of thought were so different from one another that they could not be more distant.  
Myrn dropped her chin to her chest, a lock of hair fell partially over hee green face. She saw the cobbles and the roots passing slowly by. Her legs moved tirelessly, mechanically, one boot in front of the other.  
The hot breath rose and fell once more; whistling sharply along the tunnel length. The wind reminded her of Ahmdulain in a way, it reminded her of a certain tower overlooking the Silver Plains, a place caressed by a constant breeze. Home. A place I leave almost as soon as I return. Why, why, why, why? Why must I leave the peaceful place? Look for trouble. Embroilment.  
A pause in thought, boots stopped.  
I have not strayed once from this road since I arrived. Do I always just blunder along a path set out before me? The thought swirled around in her skull, then sank down into the dregs of her mind. It settled along the mud and black sediment floor. Heavy. Has it been this way on every. Single. World? A different path.  
Why am I here? To get to the observatory? She laughed quietly to herself in the half light of the tunnel, she must have looked an insane figure. Moonlit eyes burning coals.  
Then, suddenly, they were in a tunnel no longer.  
A vast expanse, the forest of flesh. Myrn' s eyes traced the path hesitant. The flesh was sparse and became more so the further her eyes traveled before her gaze fixed a short distance from the massive gates. Her sight stopped roving the moment she espied that first grey slab jutting from the ground.  
Myrn knew that once she laid her gaze upon it that the feeling would be almost orgasmic. She savored that wait, not eating to look up at the battlements too soon.  
After a moment of still agony she looked up, and was her red self again, as the giant image reflected in her eyes. Surprisingly, she did not grin her dark grin; this pleasure was for her soul alone. It did not show itself on her body, but her soul danced and spun and clapped with glee. She grew huge inside herself and tore at the sky; outside her stride was swift and blisteringly fast even for her. She reached the massive gates in less than a minute, covering more than a kilometer. Chest heaving slowly, armor expanding to accommodate, she touched the cool metal. Inside Myrn picked clouds out from her fingernails.  
Her red self again for sure.  
The sorceress could sense the godly weight as her fingers brushed against the surface. Solid metal, dark grey. And also cool to the touch.  
The massive doors were slightly ajar, she had not noticed this from the tunnel mouth. She dispelled the charm on her flesh and coolness assailed her.  
The duo entered.


End file.
